My partner and I played this in anticipation of Final Fantasy Rebirth, and we both had a lot of fun!

The game feels strongest when it leans into its connection with the original Final Fantasy VII's story, providing more detail to important locations and fleshing out the backstory of well-loved characters. In contrast, some of the characters unique to this game feel less interesting, in part because the game doesn't take much time to develop meaningful relationships between Zack and some of the less important side characters.

Zack himself is the life of the game, and his arc as a character as well as his relationships with Cloud and Aerith were the most interesting aspects of the story to me as a fan of FF7.

A unique take on an RPG with a lot of charm and witty dialogue. You could feel the developer's passion, and the game definitely wore it's influences on it's sleeve. Elements of the gameplay, dialogue, and even music were strongly reminiscent of Pokemon for me. I mean, this is the only other game I can think of where walking past a prospective opponent causes them to stop you with an "!" exclamation point above their head and challenge you to a battle.

While I enjoyed the setting, I did feel that it started to get a bit repetitive traversing the same environment back and forth completing each chapter. The battles also started to feel a little bit stale towards the end of the game, and I started to actively avoid the opponents marked on the map.